Page 50 of Heart of the Wren
“I can be subtle.” He stood close to me and wiggled his eyebrows.
“You’re coming, then?”
Dara lay his hand on my arm. “I’ll get my coat.”
???
The church car park was already full when we arrived so I parked at the sideof the road. Hurrying quickly to avoid the light snow ruining their hair, the parishioners — all dressed in their finery — filed into the brutal, Gothic Revival-style parish church. Some stopped at the castellated tower entrance to shake hands and wish each other a happy Christmas.
A plume of smoke coming from around the corner spoke of people getting a quick puff in before the service which could easily last more than an hour. I popped my head around to find Bullseye sheltering from the snow and chatting with some of the pub’s hurling team. Tayto, the huge goalie from Cillian O’Driscoll’s team, had his hand in a bag of cheese and onion crisps.
“How’s the leg?” asked Cormac.
“Grand, yeah.” I lifted it and bent it a few times to prove my point. “It wasn’t as bad as it looked.”
Bullseye drew on his cigarette.
“Come on, lads, we’d better get in before it starts.” Cormac led the pack of men to the front of the church, leaving us alone with Bullseye.
“Carol told me she’s spending Christmas with you,” he said. “I suppose Eddie will be there as well.”
“Michael’s taking the day off so he’s sending Eddie up to me for an hour or so. I’ve told him he’s welcome to stay for dinner if he wants to.”
“Sure of course he wants to. Carol will be there.”
“Will ye not invite the fella around for dinner? On Christmas Day, of all days?”
“I will not. He’s set on taking her away. You know they’re not coming this morning? Eddie’s Church of England, apparently. He doesn’t want to go so she’s not going either. First Christmas mass she’s ever missedand it’s because of some lanky English bollocks.”
“He’s a nice man, Bullseye,” I said.
“I know he is; that’s not the point. She could do far worse than someone like him. It’s the way they’ve been sneaking around behind my back for months, making plans to sneak off to England, and getting up to God knows what.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Getting up to the same things you were getting up to at their age.”
He pointed his cigarette. “I wasn’t learning witchcraft from some tubby—”
“Steady,” I said.
“Sorry. It just slipped out. She told me about him.” He nodded to Dara. “About the stuff he’s been telling her.”
“You don’t have to talk about him like he’s not here.”
“I suppose you don’t believe any of it,” Dara said.
Bullseye laughed. “Oh, I believe in it, alright. My nana warned me, when Aine was pregnant with Carol. She told me what a seventh daughter could do. She’d seen it for herself. There used to be a woman on the other side of the village, a seventh daughter. She had healing hands, Nana told me. People would come from miles around to be cured of all sorts of things, and to have their tea leaves read. I thought Carol would escape all that but here you are, teaching her how to do it.”
“Is it such a bad thing?” Dara asked.
“I don’t want my daughter to be some mad spinster living in a shack on the edge of the village. She said she won’t come home until I accept thatshe and Eddie are together.”
I put my hands in my pockets for warmth. “And you won’t even do it now, for the day that’s in it?”
“She’ll see right through me if I pretend and it’ll lead to another row. If she wants to spend the day at yours, so be it. But promise me you’ll keep her and Eddie away from each other.”
“Come on, Bullseye, how am I—?”
“Promise me here and now you won’t let them do anything stupid.”
